On June 10, 2014 .UK became available as a second level domain. Here’s some very important information:
Checking your rights to .uk
For the majority of users the equivalent .uk domain was automatically reserved when the new .uk policy launched on June 10, 2014. So if you have a unique .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .net.uk, .plc.uk or .ltd.uk the.uk equivalent will be reserved up until June 10, 2019 as long as your domain remains registered.
To successfully complete a 2nd level .uk registration, the owner contact information must be an exact match to the owner contact information of the equivalent third level .uk domain name, otherwise your registration will fail. Furthermore, if your third level .uk domain name resides at a registrar other than OpenSRS, Nominet will email the registrant to confirm the registration.
For names that share the same website name but have different domain name endings (i.e. www.example.co.uk and www.example.org.uk) you can check whether you have the rights to the new .uk by using the rights lookup tool.
If you don't register the new .uk equivalent domain before June 10, 2019, it will be available for someone else to register, but your existing domain will, of course, still be yours as long as it remains registered to you.
Also Note, If your domain was registered before 23:59hrs on 28 October 2013 you will have the rights to the equivalent .uk domain, providing there was no other corresponding .co.uk, .org.uk, me.uk, .ltd.uk, .plc.uk or .net.uk registered.
Registering a new domain
As of June 10, 2014 you can register a website with just the .uk – no .co required.
The rules are largely the same for existing .co.uk and .org.uk domains, with these exceptions:
- Where the registrant is overseas an admin contact (address for service) is required.
PO Boxes are not acceptable in the address. - The admin contact must have a country code of GB, GG, JE or IM.
Note: UK is not an accepted country code.
A new API call is available for resellers. To learn more about “uk_get_blocker_contact”, visit the OpenSRS API Guide.
.UK second level
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